Good that you have made progress, though in my initial response I hinted at this, in part;

Quote

One thing that I have concerns for is that all this electronics will consume some amount of electrical power which may or may not be significant for your setup. Have you done the calculations in regard to what your capacity is in terms of what you get in with 255 Watts of solar panel and what you will use for all your existing electrical loads, such as lights, radio or laptop?

Under unfavourable conditions when you have low solar gain, will you have enough battery capacity to operate all these modules?

TrailerTrash

Good that you have made progress, though in my initial response I hinted at this, in part;

Quote

One thing that I have concerns for is that all this electronics will consume some amount of electrical power which may or may not be significant for your setup. Have you done the calculations in regard to what your capacity is in terms of what you get in with 255 Watts of solar panel and what you will use for all your existing electrical loads, such as lights, radio or laptop?

Under unfavourable conditions when you have low solar gain, will you have enough battery capacity to operate all these modules?

_____Paul

i am going to add battery backup power for the winter. 3 rechargeable 9volt batteries. i was going to use a switch on the panel to switch them on but then i remembered "automation". i will write a code to switch to battery mode by itself.

i also replaced the red/blue leds with red ones and code them to blink every 10seconds to save power.

Good that you have made progress, though in my initial response I hinted at this, in part;

Quote

One thing that I have concerns for is that all this electronics will consume some amount of electrical power which may or may not be significant for your setup. Have you done the calculations in regard to what your capacity is in terms of what you get in with 255 Watts of solar panel and what you will use for all your existing electrical loads, such as lights, radio or laptop?

Under unfavourable conditions when you have low solar gain, will you have enough battery capacity to operate all these modules?

I dunno if that will give you much power - 3 x 9v - most of the time these are around the 500ma rating.

If you wanted to go down that path i would be doing some AA (best price performance) or some of the more exotic Lithium chemistry batteries - have you worked out the current draw yet ?

Craig_____Paul

i am going to add battery backup power for the winter. 3 rechargeable 9volt batteries. i was going to use a switch on the panel to switch them on but then i remembered "automation". i will write a code to switch to battery mode by itself.

i also replaced the red/blue leds with red ones and code them to blink every 10seconds to save power.